#collaborativeagriculture is more than a hashtag for social posts. It’s a signal that the agricultural technology (agritech) ecosystem is evolving, driven by collaboration and innovation.
All of us in agritech know the importance of working closely with producers to develop and deliver the tools and solutions they need. What’s exciting is the rise of agritech companies collaborating with each other, focussed on their own area of expertise, with a common goal of delivering solutions with greater value than the sum of their parts.
It’s less about ‘How can our company get the biggest piece of the pie?’ and more about ‘If we all collaborate, we can actually grow the size of the pie’. The importance of working together to deliver agritech solutions that solve real problems can’t be overstated, and the potential benefits to Australian agriculture are huge.
At the heart of #collaborativeagriculture lies agritech, and the development of innovative technologies and data-driven solutions focussed on increasing productivity and working smarter, not harder, to meet growing global demand.
From precision agriculture including soil probes, remote sensors, automated irrigation and digital weather stations to drones, GPS tracking technologies, autonomous tractors and geospatial engineering, agritech offers a plethora of tools to optimise resource usage, increase efficiencies and ultimately increase yields and returns.
Many of these tools are data-driven, so the willingness of agritechs (with the producer’s permission) to share, enrich and leverage data from each other’s specialist technologies is critical. The alternative – working in silos – leads companies to waste time and money building inferior additional services outside their specialisation.
Modern farms produce loads of data, and streamlining and maximising the ways that data is used is key. The real value to famers is the ability to manage and view datasets from different sources together, gaining valuable insights for data-backed decisions for the various situations at hand.
Every stakeholder in the entire agricultural value chain – from input suppliers and processors to distributors and retailers – benefits from a more collaborative approach.
Farmers, seeing this collaboration between suppliers, might also be more willing to adopt new technologies without fear of having to choose one supplier and backing the wrong horse.
#collaborativeagriculture is about agritech companies coming together to co-create and develop solutions that address the specific needs and challenges of Australian agriculture, which will ultimately deliver better outcomes for all.
If you’re attending Beef 2024 in Rockhampton next month, join Pairtree, Farmbot, Agriwebb, Cibo Labs and Optiweigh for a free ‘Lunch & Learn’ session at 12pm on Thursday 9th May on the NBN Tech & Innovation stage: “1 + 1 = 3 = Who Is Working Together to Make Beef Production Easier”.
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